Fiction: 1982 – A Christmas Ghost Story

Every Christmas I attempt writing fiction, and most specifically a short Christmas ghost story. I think my best so far is Ethel, which I wrote last year. This year I tried something slightly different -  and something I think very hard. I have attempted to write a realistic ghost story. That is, I have tried to tell the kind of story I often hear when interviewing people who claim to have experienced paranormal phenomena. Therefore I am afraid you will find little of the usual spine chilling stuff; no Victorian ladies spectres walk through walls, no headless corpses rise from unquiet graves to  seek ghastly vengeance on the living, and no strange curses are muttered on moonlit moors. Instead, my story is rather mundane, and rather modern. It could happen in any home. Your home even. Tonight.

I hope despite all this, a few of you enjoy it. It is not finished yet, if it ever will be, but perhaps I will continue tomorrow if the writing frenzy befalls me again. Oh and one last thing — it is fiction, and never happened: but the central phenomena are based loosely on a real case I once investigated, many, many years ago.

Now I’ll let the narrator take up the story.

OK, so it’s 1982. Thursday evening, the day before Christmas Eve, and I’m walking home in crisp white snow, humming “Hymn” by Ultravox. I stop to look at some mysterious footprints, surely those of a giant panther or wolf in the crisp frozen snow? and then turn away as  three older kids on BMX’s wobble unsteadily by. I want a BMX – but no way will I get one, not this Christmas. (Or the electronic Tron home arcade game I’d seen on TV). Nope, I’m due to get a “sensible bike”, but that will do me I guess. I was walking back from the Scout’s carol service, and no one had asked me to sing, but then at 12 your voice can go any time. Some of my mates, like Paul, well he already has a voice like Darth Vader. My voice, it’s more Minnie Mouse.

As I approach the house, the church bells loose off another thunderous peal, the bell ringers hurling defiance at the sodium orange tinted clouds overhead. Tea time, but seems to have been dark for hours, yet the open curtains of our little house – “our house in the middle of the street” – Madness are still in the Top Ten with that – anyway the windows cast bright squares of light on the thin crust of snow turned to ice.

Now the house is the hero of my story, so I’ll introduce it. Built a long time ago, it is exactly the same as all the other houses in the street. Like all of them it has been done up, and the little icy path to the loo at the bottom of the garden is redundant these days, replaced when I was little more than a toddler by the new brick built extension where the old kitchen was, with a modern bathroom and indoor loo. About 74, maybe 75? I have dim memories of sprinting freezing cold past the rhododendron bush and over the mossy path slick with slug trails to the icy confines of the loo up there, and the crisp feel of medicated toilet paper, horrid stuff but did not get damp no matter how bad the roof leaked. The privy in the garden, well it’s a tool shed these days – dad keeps his junk in there, when mum forces it out of the ‘dining room.’ Not often in winter; but right now the bits of radio, lawnmower, model aeroplanes and of course his illicit CB radios. Many a night he is in there, working on some US kit, sawing down aerials or doing whatever he does, if not busy talking in numbers to bored farm hands and passing lorry drivers. He tried ham radio, but the illegality of CB remains the thrill for a bored rebel like my dad.

Oh yeah the house. Well like many other houses – kitchen filled to the bursting with Christmas food we were forbidden to touch as the great day was not yet upon us, a tiny parlour with a turkey to big for the fridge sitting in a bowl of icy water, over which mum cooed and ah’d like it was a newborn, the front room where I tried to watch Top of the Pops if mum went to bingo that night, and enjoyed Terry & June if she didn’t, and the dining room which was really dad’s lair filled with his gadgets, machinery and rubbish. Upstairs three bedrooms, one quite bare and empty – I used to hurry past the open door at night, and slam it shut without looking in to the darkness. Mum said she heard someone died in there, a former tenant, but now it holds are racks and racks of old shirts, pullovers and spare bedlinen. Still gives me the creeps. My room and my parents: and the ‘new’ bathroom, all olive green fittings and deep blue walls slick with the steam of the piping hot bath water (if someone had remembered to turn the immersion heater an hour before at least).

There remains just one more thing- the loo. Olive green to match the bath – but who wants to hear about our toilet? Yet I’m afraid it is the toilet, this modern comfortable convenience, that is the heart of my story. Not the grim cold little privy long disused at the bottom of the garden, but this most convenient of all, well, modern conveniences. It was upon this very throne that five years ago on Christmas night Uncle Roger had passed in to eternity, just four months after Elvis met a similarly tragic fate.

Now I can’t recall much of that night, apart from the cheery ambulancemen wishing us all “a very Merry Christmas” as they wheeled out Uncle Roger’s corpse. What a way to go! Roger was my mothers brother, a kind jovial plump chap, who we all liked. We are far less keen on his wife, the rather glamorous Aunt Gladys. She hailed from somewhere in Surrey, and from a ‘good family’ I’m told, and they never really forgave her for marrying Roger; a provincial librarian was not what they had planned for a woman who was I am told in her day a prominent society type. I know Gladys as a women of decidedly uncertain complexion and very forthright views, who makes disapproval an art form. The thing she most disapproves of most in the world is my mother; dad however comes a close second, with the dog and I vying for third. Her (extremely infrequent) visits are ordeals, inspections, perhaps even inquisitions? She seems to take delight in being disappointed, and I had never known her to spend a single night under our roof. When Gladys and Roger came, it meant picking them up from the hotel, and not even a small sherry for dad till they were safely back in the Station Arms, where Gladys had made herself the least popular guest in that worthy establishments history. She likes like to criticize, does Gladys, and the staff take umbrage at her extremely honest (and lengthy) descriptions of her failings.

Enough! I must speed up this story, or I will be here all night. On getting in and tramping slush and ice over the carpet of the hall, I saw Dad in a state of wild agitation. He was carrying a milk crate stuffed with motor parts, bookies forms, long dead chequebooks and jam jars full of valves, defunct batteries and odd bits of wiring. No word was necessary; he as off to the outside privy, to put away as much as he could, and tomorrow he would drive to the skip to abandon three years cherished treasures. He was clearing the dining room; for the first time in 36 months, and only the second since we lost Uncle Roger, Gladys must be coming to visit, and last time had been a fleeting and unwelcome visit on legal matters. Gladys, or Mrs Broome-Verall, as I must not desperately attempt to remember to call her. The hour was at end, and the innocence of youth was gone, Christmas was no longer a time of cheer and goodwill, but a time of sterile manners and terrified politeness, amidst the hostile stilted chatter of my elders, and the long silences. Silence, because Mrs Broome-Verall as Gladys shall be henceforth, well she does not like the TV on. Television is a vulgar medium, as she is fond of saying.

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OK, OK. This is supposed to be a ghost story, and I can tell by the look on your face you are bored with it already. Let’s cut to the chase…

It’s midnight now, Christmas Eve creeping in as the clock ticks on closer to Gladys and a Christmas ruined. Dad is furiously scrubbing something, mum shouting at the dog as she re-hoovers the front room for the fifth time– lucky old Mrs Siddons next door is deaf as a post, and I can faintly smell emulsion as dad has tried to make the dining room look respectable, OK, less shabby. I’m reading my mothers copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, which adults have raved about for weeks and I just can’t see the humour in. Then it happens: a sharp, persistent rapping, loud enough to reverberate throughout the house.

The hoover instantly cuts out, and Dad lets slip a word I’ve never heard him use before, even after a dozen pints at one of his roisterous CB eyeballs at The Thorn. Debbie the Dog lets loose the most ghastly, unearthly howling. It’s like a game of freeze tag. We all stop, frozen by a dreadful realization – Gladys has come early. Even know she is standing outside, her prim pointy little nose doubtless growing icicles as her mood becomes more icy than the weather. For a moment the whole house seems to crouch in terror, the painful expectancy building. And then a sudden flurry of agitated violent raps breaks the calm, and I hear dad steeling himself for the horror to come stride manfully over and throw open the door. The whole world waits juddering in pace for a second; then anticlimax. No Gladys, no polite but frigid hugs, no sound of machine gun tutting as she enters. Just mum and dad laughing, and the sound of dad bouncing up the stairs, shouting down “well we know she is not here till three tomorrow” with a kind of wild joy. He does not bother to knock, but hurls open my door, and shouts at me “what’s with all the banging? You’ll wake the neighbours.”

And then it happened again. A short staccato burst of machine gun raps, sparking off Debbie’s howling again, and echoing clearly from along the passage. Dad actually jumped, as did I, so unexpected was it. In his jubilation at discovering Gladys was not already at the door, he had forgotten the violent knocking he had taken as an omen of this doom. Now he decided it was an omen of failing plumbing, and rejuvenated by the prospect of dismantling the hot water system shot off downstairs to find a spanner.

I wasn’t so sure, but the hour was late, and I needed the loo. I walked along the passage, and saw the basted door to the “haunted” room had swung open again, so averted my eyes and tugged it shut as I made the leap for safety in to the bathroom. Well nearly, even as I was barging in, a sudden flurry of deafening raps send me skidding backwards, the light snapping off in my hand as I fell on to the lino, and nearly wetting myself in terror, crawled back towards the sanctuary of my bedroom. That was how dad found me, clad only in Y fronts, crawling like a thing possessed away from the bathroom, waving the light cord like a trophy. I don’t think he knew whether to howl with rage, tears or laughter, but he chose the latter.

A while passed, the banging now seemingly over. Dad fixed the light cord with a quick knot, and set about dismantling the immersion, muttering about air blocks and lime scale build up but happy to have an excuse to take apart the whole system, however unnecessarily. In the meantime I discard Adrian and quickly dressed, as I hear mum calling with a certain urgency. Turns out all she wants is for me to pop next door and check old Mrs Siddons is alright. “After all dear, it would be awful if she had had a fall, and is lying there banging on the walls trying to get us to hear, and we did nothing – it being Christmas and all.” Biting back the urge to ask if it would be better if we left her to die slowly at Whitsun or Easter, I pulled on my old parka that no longer fits properly, and scrambled off on my errand of mercy.

On arriving at Mrs Siddon’s front door however I was rather lost. All the lights were off, and I could hardly knock till she awakened if she was safely asleep. Even if she did not mind me woken after midnight, and she is always up at 5am sharp to go get her morning paper, even if I she doesn’t mind, the noise it would take such a deaf old woman to come down would wake the rest of the street. And if she had fallen, and was lying somewhere in the darkness upstairs rapping on the wall for help, how was she meant to answer the door even if she heard me? I decided I’d best see if the back offered any more possibilities. I slipped back through our house, and heard mum saying in a hollow tone “and the stupid bitch still believes I poisoned him. I should have done to put him out of his misery with her, would have been be a mercy I tell you”. Even now Gladys arrival overshadowed everything it seems.

I tried to call the dog to follow me to the back garden, but Debbie was clearly upset. She had retreated in to the parlour, squeezing herself behind the beer crates and boxes of never used silver wedding gifts. Always does that if there is a row in the house, and spends most of her time there when Gladys is in the house,but just as well as Gladys can’t abide dogs. I nose out in to the garden, the sky still the colour of a muted electric fire from the myriads of street lamps. Then I recall mum’s dream.

It was just a few weeks after Uncle Roger had passed from us; mum had woken suddenly, having trouble sleeping. The funeral had not been a success, and the missing will and almost open hostility of Gladys to us all had really upset mum. I wasn’t meant to know about the dream, but I have heard her tell other story when she thinks I’m not listening. Maybe a dozen or more times now, and always in those hushed tones she adopts when talking of sad or strange things. On the night in question she had awakened, and heard a voice calling her name. She did not wake my father, but went to her bedroom window, and looked out, and there was real as life was Uncle Roger, deathly pale and clearly a corpse, staring up at her from by the rhododendron bush. She had really liked, indeed loved her brother, but in that instant she said she felt a chill of utter pure evil, and she threw herself backwards on to the bed, awakening herself and my father instantly. (I can still recall the muffled screams from them both – I just wondered what the hell they were up to, and deciding better not to ask, went back to bed. There are some things we are not meant to know, at least when it comes to your parents bedroom pursuits.)

My mother was not right for a few days after that, and she kept shaking. Dad told her Roger was probably still alive, having faked his own death and was doubtless hiding out from Aunt Gladys in the potting shed, but no, for once she failed to see the funny side. The “ghost” had really really upset her. However I could tell dad was worried, and a few days later he took mum off to see the doctor, who I think gave her “something for her nerves”. After that, normality slowly returned.

Anyhows as I walked through the frozen night garden, past that rhododendron bush, I shivered and I’m not sure it was entirely the cold. Then my blood ran – well not exactly cold, as it was freezing in my veins from being out there in the night, but the thumping in my ears told me it was doing something. From the privy I heard the phantom rattling of chains! After a second or two I realised, it was just the chain on the cistern blowing in the wind. Spooks! What rot! I steeled my nerves again, and climbed over the fence in to the inky blackness of Mrs Siddon’s yard.

Suffice to say this proved no more useful than the front; and actually I did not try very hard to find her, for there propped against the wall I discovered a shiny new bike, a 5 green gear racer, still firmly wrapped in Halford’s plastic. So this was where my Christmas present was concealed! When I finally got back in, there had been no more knocking, and mum and dad were demolishing the Christmas port and lemon. Given we had no central heating, not even storage heaters, I left them to their drinks and scurried off to my welcome bed, head racing with thoughts of what five gears could achieve on a downhill run.

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Christmas Eve dawned with the frost staining my window in a fantastical pattern of faerie ferns. I jumped down the stairs, hoping my parents inevitable hangover from last night had not precluded them getting up and putting the electric fire on, to be greeted by the reassuring smell of toast and frying bacon. And I’m afraid nothing of interest happened for hours, not till maybe eleven, by which time the house was once again a whirling kaleidoscope of frenzied tidying, panicked squealing and near hysteric dusting. Only a few hours till the doom that is Gladys needs picking up from the station, and the lucky old hotel staff stand inspection for the first of her tirade of complaints. Soon after that, our turn! What that, isn’t this a ghost story? OK OK, I’ll move on…

It was just before noon it started up again. Mum and dad were arguing downstairs, in fact shouting quite loudly. I did not need to ask what about. I was upstairs, arranging the linen in airing cupboard. It was the banging again, clear, sharp, raps, and close by. In fact this time they seemed to be getting faster, indeed building in speed and momentum, until finally there was a tremendous rapidfire volley of sharp short cracks. And then I realised it was coming from the bathroom.

OK, it took a moment for that to sink in, and in that moment my parents stopped shouting, and the banging ended. I wandered in to the bathroom, and looked suspiciously at the taps, and dad started to come up stairs to see what was going on. Mum wasn’t having that – she had to get the last word in, and so she did, and as they started shouting again, I began to carefully inspect the plughole. Snap! Snap! Right behind me, causing me to yelp in sheer shock, the air knocked out of my lungs by the unexpected rapping. And then I saw the ghost.

You look relieved that I have finally got to the ghost, but I suspect you won’t be. What I saw was no misty apparition, not even a figure like mum’s dream of Uncle Roger: nope what I saw was the plastic toilet seat on our loo banging up and down, up and down, seemingly as if slammed with real venom, hatred even, by an invisible hand. I’m not a brave person – not even a strong willed one; but the effect was both so odd and so ridiculous I could do nothing but stand and stare, and then giggle, and finally laugh. The more I laughed, the harder it slammed, as if my jollity in the face of this unnatural phenomena, this sanitary convenience from the other side, was somehow annoying it. I must have laughed a good thirty seconds, and all the time the lid slammed with greater speed, until I heard both my parents running up the stairs. I cared not: I wanted them to see this. And then suddenly, a tremendous gurgling built up, and a strange watery voice issued forth from the cistern, crying “GET OUT!!!” I fled for my life down the passage, knocking my mother flying, and causing dad to pirouette in to the wall and fall clutching a long string of shiny tacky tinsel.

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OK, time to leave this for tonight. I’ll finish the story later if anyone cares.

cj x

Fresher’s Week in Cheltenham: Six Things I Wish I Had Known

Another year, another Fresher’s Week about to start here in Cheltenham. A friend from the University of Gloucestershire told me the new students arrived today, but it was only when I met some friendly types who started a conversation in a fast food restaurant a few minutes ago that I reflected on the fact this generation of students were not just not born when I first arrived here to study, they were in fact still seven years off it! Yep, twenty five years ago I arrived, in late September 1987, in a Cheltenham which has not really changed all that much in the intervening years. Well there are a huge number more students now, and St. Paul’s is dominated by them rather, and they all seem to go in to town whereas the only reason I ever venture off campus was to visit Waterstones, or to go to Burger Star on the Bath Road or the KFC, but hey, it’s not all that different.

I however was. Younger, far scattier, and prone to weird out accidentally my fellow students, I was a long haired hippy in an age of Rick Astley & Tom Cruise Top Gun era haircuts, when male students wore shirts and jackets to the bar and everything was a lot more yuppy and aspirational than now. That changed within a few years, a indie kids and grunge types arrived, but in 1987 students here were sharp dressing types who were pretty ambitious as I recall.  Well a lot of them! I’d just had my ghost experience at Thetford Priory and was pretty freaked out, and I’d spent the previous two years neglecting my ‘A’ levels and playing wargames and roleplaying games, and hanging around at my grandmother’s house with Hugh and Gary McF, and occasionally others. I knew absolutely nothing about girls, and had little interest (I was a slow developer) – well at least till I suddenly started to get interested a few days in to uni – and I was painfully, horribly shy.

I’ve written about Fresher’s Week 1987 many times, because of the very dramatic events which marked mine – a bloodbath, a flood, a ghost investigation, and a mad crush that persisted a while – and it still forms the basis for the uni life novel I return to every few years and never finish. Still despite all the trauma, I had a pretty good time. Some of the facts are  recorded in an earlier post on this blog called Family Nights In With Satan if anyone is interested in such things.

So thinking about it – what should I have told those Freshers I met tonight? I think after seeing 25 generations of students arrive I have a few insights – so here are

Six Things I Wish I Had Known as A Fresher in Cheltenham!

1. You may well be horribly horrifically homesick. It is perfectly normal to cry at times, and go home for weekends. You are not giving in. You will miss your friends/parents/dog. Don’t try and stay all the time for fear you will miss out on anything. You are not mad, depressed or failing in some way. You are homesick, like many before you. I was!

2. You may be worried about how hard everything will be academically. Relax – after ‘A’ level, it’s just easier and easier. Anything is easier than ‘A’ levels. You will only fail if you suffer appalling illness, bad luck or are on a truly awful course, and I don’t think there are many here — unless you try. If you work at it anyone can fail any course.  It will be a heroic effort, but by failing to hand in work, forgetting exams, being drunk constantly and never once so much as glancing in the direction of a library you might just manage it.

3. Everyone will tell you that you will split up with your boyfriend/girlfriend from back home in under a term. Don’t believe them – I know people who stayed faithful and committed while hundreds of miles apart at different uni’s for all three years.  (Because noone else would have them! – no, only joking. )

4. Cheltenham is pretty safe, but people do very occasionally get attacked here.  Don’t walk home alone, regardless of your gender, and don’t get so drunk you can’t look after yourself. Don’t shout abuse at strangers, or annoy people who might turn nasty. Every year a few students in Fresher’s Week are viciously assaulted through drunkenly waking up locals on their way back from town or even in to town from FCH. This year it will be more, and I’m buying a petrol driven chainsaw tomorrow to make my attacks more memorable and more of a deterrent. Seriously though, there are plenty of very scary people here. Don’t give them a reason to notice you.

5. You may well be incredibly conscientious in your first year – too conscientious.  By your third year you will be partying wildly and skipping lectures. This is the wrong way round to do things  as unless the system has changed your second and third year marks make up your final degree.  You should be having a good time now, just not so good a time you get chucked out. (Sadly burning students at the stake for not doing the seminar readings is no longer policy here).

6. Join the Christian Union. They have coffee, biscuits, and people who know even less about sex and romance than you. You are bound to pull? Or maybe join a society, though sadly the Student Parapsychology Society no longer exists, but hey it had a good ten year innings, ironically disappearing about the time I first got involved with Most Haunted. 

That is what I should have told the students, but instead I just made a few bad jokes and was my usual cheerful self. Still, I wish a few people had given me these pointers, so if you do read them and think what a load of cack, sure thing buddy add your own in the comments below, or email me on chrisjensenromer@hotmail.com, and i’ll update this piece – not that any student here will ever have any reason to read it!

cj x

POST SCRIPT: Andrew added this in comments. but as many people will not read comment I think it’s worth adding to main body of the text – what follows is not my advbice, so I will change it to a different colour, but some very good points in there –

Andrew’ s Top Six 

… some of which are deliberate counter-arguments to CJ’s just to be amusing/provoke debate, some of which are deadly serious, and most of which are both.

1. Don’t forget to tell your parents if you move house. In today’s era of cheap mobile phones this is less relevant than it was when I moved in 1990. In my first year, I got allocated some pretty shonky “overflow” accommodation at Over Hospital (rat-infested and thankfully now demolished), and after a month I clubbed together with a couple of other first-years and rented a private house. I *completely* forgot to tell my parents for a month – they continued to ring the payphone at the geriatric hospital, further confusing the already confused residents. I’d rung them a couple of times, to say hello, but hadn’t actually remembered to tell them about the move.

2. Do turn up and do hand in your work. That is pretty much all you need to do to get a 3rd or a 2:2. CJ is exactly right about academic ease; ‘A’ Levels are the hardest thing you will ever do and a degree is a walk in the park in comparison to those exams. That said, nobody is going to chase you for work or chase you if you don’t turn up. If you forget, if you can’t be bothered, you will just fail and eventually you WILL get chucked off the course, and that means no more student loan.

2a. Within reason, schedule your lectures around your convenience, not around your lecturers’ convenience. For the larger intake subjects, most lectures are run more than once per week, notably evening classes for those doing part-time courses. You CAN switch. Sometimes you have to justify your request to switch. “I’ve got a clash” used to be my excuse, but I suspect in today’s world of computerised timetabling this is less valid. My real reason was that I do my best work in the late afternoon and evenings, it’s just the time of day when I think better. I told my friends it was because it meant I could have a lie-in after nightclubbing, which was also partially true.

3. Play the field but use protection. I must admit I did a lot of the former and very little of the latter, and somehow managed to avoid infection and pregnancy, but that was just a fluke. THIS is the right time in your life to have lots of relationships. Get it out of your system NOW so that you don’t go and mess up someone else’s life (especially your children’s) by having an affair when you’ve settled down in later life. Now as a fresher you may be thinking that you’re the nerdiest person in the world and you’ll never get any action, but the thing is, you’re at a university that accepted you as a student, ergo almost all the other students are going to be very similar to you. In particular, males, pay attention: The University of Gloucestershire is predominantly an arts, theology and teaching college, which are heavily female-oriented subjects; contrary to traditional belief, girls are just as keen as boys. Just relax, be nice to your preferred gender, be conversational without trying to dominate the conversation and relationships will just fall into your lap. Also, the phrase “Please may I kiss you?” said at an appropriately late point in the evening after a couple of hours of familiarisation is probably the most reliable chat-up line in the world.

4. Never, ever get so drunk (or drugged) that you cannot make sensible decisions, walk, read a bus timetable or call a taxi. Cheltenham is not just “pretty safe”, it is one of the safest towns in the country. Ninety-nine percent of reported “attacks” are actually just arguments between drunk people turned sour. Keep away from really, really drunk people, especially drunk strangers, and do not hang out with anyone who thinks that spiking drinks or taking unlabelled drugs is fun. If you can see a bunch of drunk people arguing in a street, don’t walk down it, find another route, or at least find someone else who is not drunk to walk with. Remember, YOU are responsible for your own actions when you are drunk. If you turn up in court having crashed your car or having vandalized a statue, YOU will be found guilty, not your friends, not the pub that served you, and claiming to have been drunk will not reduce your sentence.

4a. When going out, agree in advance with some friends that you are going to look after each other. This includes telling each other who has had enough to drink and ensuring that everyone goes home safely (not necessarily together, but at least aware of each others’ going-home arrangements). Never, ever get offended when someone tells you “I think you’ve had enough.” They might just be saving your life. Think of it as practice; you can always try to have a little bit more next time, rather than right now.

4b. People who are already drunk or on drugs will not notice if, when they offer you drink or drugs, you pour it into a plant-pot or push it under the sofa cushion.

4c. Girls only walk home with sober people.

4d. Girls, only walk home with sober people.

4e. Note how the addition or removal of a comma in 4c & 4d changes the meaning, but retains the wisdom.

4f. Males are more likely to be attacked in drunken arguments than females. Don’t make smart-arse remarks or aggressive gestures to people who are too drunk to recognise your intellectual or physical superiority.

5. Find out what work contributes how much to your overall degree and put in the effort accordingly. Nobody but YOU will organise this for you. There is no point spending 50% of your work time on something that contributes only 5% of your final degree. Also, you can use this information to tactically plan your socialising; if your marks are evenly distributed throughout years 1,2 and 3 then you can be really conscientious in your first and second year, achieve a pass mark, and then party for most of your third year! Or you might find that only the second half of a module carries any markable work, allowing you to party in safety for the first half.

6. Gloucestershire is a really beautiful place. Get out there and visit it. It really is too easy to spend all your life in town, and even easier to stay in your particular (probably cheap) part of town. No excuses if you don’t have a car; Gloucestershire has a really good bus service. Trips out also make good romantic gestures. My top bus-accessible sights from Cheltenham: Gloucester Cathedral (bus 94), Broadway & Winchcombe (bus 606), Tewkesbury Abbey (bus 41), Gloucester Docks (94), Cirencester (bus 51), Bourton-on-the-Water & Stow-on-the-Wold (bus 801), Leckhampton Hill / Cricklade Hill (busses B, P and Q then footpaths; note that you can book a barbeque pit in advance at Cricklade Hill for a truly superb party). Within Cheltenham itself, Suffolk Road (walking distance from Park Campus, Montpellier or Bath Road) and Charlton Kings (busses B, P and Q) are lovely places to visit and have lots of cool coffee shops with excellent WiFi.

6a. Further afield, Bath and Birmingham are well worth the train fare, and Bristol and Wolverhampton are often on the tour list for some very good bands at some very reasonable ticket prices (Wulfrun Hall and Civic Hall in Wolverhampton; Anson Rooms in Bristol Students’ Union – all of these venues are not-for-profit).

Rather More Sensible Update from Someone Who Should Know…

Uni lecturer Jonathan Elcock’s top six, which of course are biased given what he does for a living, culled from comments. Also very biased towards students in Cheltenham.

1) Go to the first session of everything; even if you are hung over. Missing first sessions can be a mistake as the lecturer will often explain what the assessments are, and what the expectations for that particular course or module might be.
2) Use the Moodle site for the module. Depending on your course you will get very few paper handouts, but a lot of the information will be on the Moodle sites. For some courses you will also find the slides that the lecturer uses available for download.
3) Be nice to your neighbours, if you are going to be walking home very late at night don’t shout random things in the street or knock on random doors. Chris and Andrew have already explained Cheltenham is fairly safe, but winding up people late at night might have consequences.
4) Make sure you know how to contact the “Helpzone”.
5) Keep the university up to date with your current address, and check your university email.
6) Enjoy your time at University.

Via Media: Reflections on the Appointment of Bishop Richard Dawkins

OK, just to make absolutely clear – this was my April Fool’s joke for 2012. No Bishops were harmed in the making of this post.

I expect many people were surprised, not least “New Atheists” and devout members of the Church of England, by last nights announcement from Whitehall that Richard Dawkins has been ordained in to the Church of England, and has in very short (holy) order been appointed to an episcopal see. Bishop Dawkins, as he will become on ascending to the office of Bishop of Bury St. Edmunds later this year, has for many years been an outspoken atheist, and indeed his best selling book “The God Delusion” was an impassioned call for a secular culture and end to traditional religious thought, almost as radical as those by Anglican Divines like Don Cupitt or former Bishop of Woolwich John A. T. Robinson whose “Honest to God” caused such controversy in the 1960′s.

Perhaps the greatest surprise to an Anglican like myself is that the obvious diocese for Dawkins was missed – one would have expected him to become Bishop of Durham. Still, with the lack of vacancy in that diocese Bury St. Edmunds is a good choice. My only fear is that his attitudes on religion may be too moderate and too simplistic and literal-fundamentalist for the average sophisticated pew dweller of the modern Anglican church. While I admire his liberal stance on many social issues, including his defining statement on homosexual marriage — “I don’t think it should be compulsory” — I too feel it should be restricted to non-heterosexual laity and clergy alike and non-mandatory– his rather direct and literal reading of a text as complex as the Bible flies in the face of my Neo-Orthodox reading of the Holy Scripture, and will cause him no doubt to have many problems with those who place Tradition and Experience and Magisterium above Scripture – indeed I don’t think we have seen the spirit of sola scriptura and emphasis on the Bible alone as the basis for the Christian faith so loudly advocated since the time of Luther and Calvin, except by certain Evangelicals. The fact Dawkins chooses to refute the whole book is irrelevant – he still accepts a theological principal that that is all Christianity is that has not been fashionable since the days of Augustine (with a few noted exceptions as mentioned), and that would make Origen blush.

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral

Still, the move to appoint Dawkins as Bishop of Bury St. Edmunds is undoubtedly a courageous one, albeit not unsurprising. I seem to recall he is a good friend of former Bishop of Liverpool Richard Harries, and last month debated the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams. During that debate Dawkins made what many saw as a shocking announcement, that he was actually “agnostic”, not entirely excluding the possibility of a god. That this shocked anyone at all was a source of amazement to me, given that his scale of atheism and the words he used were almost verbatim those he has used in The God Delusion many years before. He is comfortably, clearly a pragmatic atheist, while admitting to being a “cultural Christian” — and as such I think he has to be accepted as the perfect candidate to reflect the views of the modern CofE Church attendee.

Of course I fear he may have problems with certain of the defining principles of the Church of England, in particular the first and most crucial of these, The 39 Articles. The first article reads “God is nice: preach this often, but cause no offense to any man, women, child or person of other gender.” In his practically absolute denial of the existence of the deity Dawkins will not got far enough for many Anglican pew sitters, but will outrage others who will ask how the niceness of God can be compatible with His non-existence. I think they should take a moment to reflect on Rorty’s non-representationalism, and non-realism in modern theological language – clearly Cupitt and others blazed a path here, even if Dawkins is slightly too much mired in traditional notions of faith to fully accept their principle that when we say something we don’t actually mean it at all like that, but something quite different, quite sacred, and quite mundane, and quite ineffable, as the word sacred means nothing.

While the new fast tracking system for Anglican ordinands has been controversial, I do like it. I myself am hoping to be raised to be Dean of somewhere one day, or perhaps a Royal Chaplaincy would suit. For too long the Church was a haven for the family idiot, or for Neo-Marxist social liberals who had been thrown out of Outrage for being too outspoken. The new meritocratic system, where merit is measured largely by the colour of ones old school tie promises to bring a reassuring conservatism back to the church, even if it is only a social conservatism not a theological one.

Bishop Richard Dawkins

Most surprising to me was that while I can see Lambeth Palace would be enthusiastic for this move, that 10 Downing Street assented. Prime Minister David Cameron must have known that it would make the church relevant to 90% more modern British people than it currently is, and it is clearly a huge coup for the Anglican Communion – Dawkins book sales far outweigh all the Bishops combined since the Colenso affair in the 19th century, and the incorporation of the schismatic “New Atheists” back in to the Anglican Communion albeit with the new “Skeptical Rite” will do huge amounts to to boost church attendance and take pressure on hard pressed roof repairs off jumble sales and bailiffs enforcing Chancel tax. So why did Cameron agree?

Well, in the words of senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby the Church of England is primarily a social organisation, not a religious one, and one must maintain the balance, the Anglican Via Media, between those who believe in God and those who do not. Cameron clearly took this important lesson to heart, and Lambeth, with a long tradition on its side, have appointed the best man to the post. I fear that next month some long haired ex-acid head Graham Kendrick’s chorus singing loon will be appointed to balance the balance: but it for best perhaps, and at long last the CofE has learned from our current government – it is bad to look both heartless and feeble, so do both alternately?

Best wishes to Richard Dawkins on his ecclesiastical preferment. Further reportage here.
cj x

Fiction: Ethel — A Christmas Ghost Story

I wrote a little Christmas ghost story, which may amuse some of my friends. It’s a story I have been trying to write on and off since the Most Haunted days, when it came to me one Christmas Eve in a dream. It’s a little unfair, because to really understand it relies on you getting the joke, and spotting the references — which I suspect very few of you are likely to know. Still if you do it may amuse, and even if not I hope it is mildly spooky. This is in lieu of a Christmas card or Christmas message, and yes I know it’s not very good, but some stories just demand to be written…

Ethel – A Christmas Ghost Story

There has been much speculation in the press over the disappearance of my dear friend, while in the act of “ghost hunting”.

While sceptics groups have taken the tragedy as a warning to the curious of the hazards of engaging in the infantile pursuit of the impossible, and believers have made many strange and curious speculations about spontaneous combustion, the police have taken the line that he left, perhaps deranged by his recent illness, of his own accord, and will turn up somewhere.

It seems quite probable he did meet a young woman holidaymaker, and has set off to make a new life for himself. Those of us who knew him knew he was at the time of his disappearance both financially burdened and saddened by the end of his media career, but do find it out of character he has not been in touch with anyone.

Temporary amnesia, a romance, or perhaps sadly severe illness seem more likely explanations than the foul play suggested by sceptics or the paranormal end suggested by the woo crowd.

Whatever the truth, his possessions were found by myself when I arrived, two days after his last email and concerned by the rambling bizarre nature of his last message to me.

All of his possessions barring his wallet, clothing he was wearing, laptop satchel and mobile phone were found, as his email suggests, neatly placed in the pantry.

Enough time has now passed for me to share with the interested public his last emails, in the hope they may shed light upon the curious case,and help bring him back to his friends and family. Do contact me or the police if you have any idea of his current whereabouts – young and romantic, he showed great promise in the field of psychical research, and was a good friend to me for many years.

Here are his emails, in order.

***********************************************

Dear CJ.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. I stepped off the train in to a scene from a Christmas card; snow had fallen, snow on snow, and while miraculously it was exactly the right kind of snow, everyone had made tracks for home. I walked down a few steps to view the tawdry holiday lights of Marley High Street. An American might have been taken by the quaint charm, but I just felt light headed – my recent flu has not quite left, and the wooziness flushed from my floaty brow to my tingling toes. I felt like I was walking in the Christmas of my childhood, in a magical world, where the ghosts of Christmas Past were near.

A few folk wrapped staggered by, hard wrapped against the winter cold; even The White Horse pub appeared to be a derelict floating on a sea of ice, despite the chalkboard promise of big prizes for the pub quiz tonight. Yes, Marley really was dead tonight.

Still, I’m not here for the holiday spirit; I’m here to work, and the very fact that the place seems to be little more than a dormitory town with all the charm of off-season Great Yarmouth makes it all the more appealing. The icy wind actually seemed to clear my head, and the walk through the centre (a rather wonderful art deco cinema – you really should check it out!) and then out along Compton Lane to the house did much to improve my spirits.

It’s about three miles from Marley town centre to the house. Seems that until the ribbon development of the thirties led to houses growing out along the roads, it was a separate village, and the district still holds its old name of Compton. Not a taxi to be had in this Christmas Card scene, so I trudged the whole way, rucksack on my back passed shiny new build estates filled with delightful children and advert-ready families. Or so I imagine: I did not stop to peek through whatever-has-replaced Laura Ashley curtains.

By the edges of Compton I was dizzy and tired, and despite the cold had broken a most unseasonal sweat. I think I told you in my last email; the Letting Agent had three tenants leave, citing “ghosts”, and the landlord who lives abroad finally agreed to my visit, on the understanding there is no publicity. I expect damp or noisy neighbours are the real issue, but a week over Christmas to get over the flu and think about where my career would take me next. Downhill fast probably, without brakes – is that not the definition of “career”? Still my reputation as a “ghost expert” has finally got me something worthwhile, a little holiday not far from town.

When I saw the house I was a little taken a back – on the train my feverish fantasies had been of a little thatched cottage, roof pristine with glistening snow awaiting only the soft thud of Santa’s sleigh, or a crumbling gothic manor set back from the road. In fact there is such a place – Bott Hall, once the home to a man who made his fortune manufacturing some condiment considered quite delicious in the inter-war period – big enough to get a mention in the guidebook, devoid of any charm, it now serves as a conference centre or some such.

Anyway the house I had come to evict the spooks from is quite ordinary; Edwardian middle class home, according to my notes once home to a successful stockbroker, since the early seventies owned by the current landlord (who now lives in France), and let to a succession of tenants, none of whom complained until he had some much needed renovations done a couple of years back. Since that time no one had stayed long, and some had fled well within the six months they were required to pay for. The stories seemed hazy, contradictory – voices, the roar of a motorbike when none could be seen, a black almost shapeless “thing” that scurried around the kitchen, and much more besides.

I passed the village school, now yuppie apartments, the Norman Church and the bookies – which still preserved the antique sign in glistening gold paint of a former occupier, “Theobald the Barbers.” Nothing about the tiny suburb of Marley suggested spooks, and as I walked up the path I was ready to put on a lemsip and settle down for an uneventful week of reading – I brought the book you bought me on Roman religion along, and Simpson & Westwood too.

Suddenly my attention was drawn to something quite ordinary, yet strangely unsettling. I can’t put my finger on why I found it worthy of attention at all, but across the snowy fields I saw an old wooden barn, broken down, indeed barely standing. Something about the silhouette of the ancient structure seemed malignant, like a hunched beast waiting to creep, as son as the curtains were shut, close to the house, and reach out for…

The milk bottles on the doorstep broke my reverie – empty of course, but as I slid on the icy step I kicked them, and cursing struggled to find the right key. And then I noticed something odd – one was not empty, but contained a murky grey liquid, not frozen despite the temperature. I fumbled with mittens, and picked it up, and the secret was revealed – someone had dropped a stick of licorice in it, and seemingly shaken it. Odd, but hardly eerie, so I left it there and went in.

OK, the layout is prosaic enough – a sitting room, dining room, what used to be called a “morning room” and a bookshelf lined study on the ground floor, the kitchen and pantry and a couple of small rooms, perhaps once servants quarter in the basement, with a coal hole and a kitchen door opening on to steps. There are four bedrooms – one was clearly the master bedroom, one had a vaguely feminine air, and their was a smaller room, probably a child’s, overlooking an ancient tree. Cosy enough, I turned on the electric, fired up the boiler – pilot lit first time, and placing a Carbon Monoxide meter in position (could the answer to the ghosts be that simple?) I set out looking for the best place to sleep. Given the fact it’s let unfurnished, I chose to place my sleeping bag in the kitchen, and thanked the landlords foresight in installing gas central heating, even if it had stirred up the ghosts. Anyway I have managed to get a wifi connection, and have fixed some food – there is both a kettle and microwave down here, together with a lot of other stuff seemingly half packed. I’m thanking the ghosts for scaring the last tenants away so well they could not be bothered to collect their possessions!

Have a good night, and if I don’t have time to write or get eaten by the beasties a great Xmas! Will email tomorrow if the Horrors have not got me…

x

**********************************************

Hullo CJ!

I sent my last about twenty minutes ago, but something quite extraordinary happened. I ate a bit – helps with the fever, and then I thought I heard the sound of a motorbike pass by. I’m not sure what it is – probably just the central heating warming up – but it sounded for all the world like a really badly tuned bike driving in, coasting on the gravel, and being lent against the wall with a clank. I was looking at the boiler when I heard what sounded like the back door opening, and someone creeping in, wearing socks and trying to be stealthy.

I have been set up on ghost hunts before, so I slipped my shoes off, and quietly keeping to the sides crept upstairs. Nothing: except an old fashioned tennis racket leaning against a wall, just inside the back door. I never saw it on my first tour, but I neglected to take photos then. Yeah, I know, some “ghost expert” I am. Obviously it was there before and I overlooked it, but it was still a bit odd. I would have paid more attention, but I got a whiff of cologne, and convinced someone was in the house hiding from me I dashed up the stairs, only to freeze in terror.

In the door of the child’s room I thought I saw the thing – perhaps a giant rat, a beady eyed thing. On reflection it perhaps looked more like a dog than a rat, but the scruffiest most outrageous jumble of breeds you can imagine, a disreputable animal. I was standing there looking at it, and it was looking at me – but neither of us moved. Then suddenly it was gone, and I advanced in to the room cautiously, still clutching that absurd old tennis bat.

Nothing – bare boards, moonlight, and the swaying of the apple tree branches, heavy laden with snow. Suddenly I realized – it was just a shadow, and the glistening reflection of ice. How stupid I am! I went round the whole house just to be certain, and apart from a faint whiff of pipe tobacco in the study, which may well have just been my imagination, nothing. In the morning I’ll make sense of this place, and lay the ghosts for good.

X

Hi CJ,

I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas Day. I have had a fairly dull time, but that is how I like it. The fever has now nearly gone, though I think last night played a strain on my nerves, and I’m still a little shaky. I’m annoyed I shall miss Dr Who, but I’ll catch it later on I-Player. I hope you enjoyed The Ladykillers, and dinner was good and DC wicked, or vice-versa.

Not much of interest occurred in the morning – I woke after a strange dream, in which a woman’s voice called repeatedly to someone called Ellen to “get the pudding on to steam”. I did not open my eyes, but lay in a reverie in which I imagined a kitchen bustling with the clank of pots and festive preparation of a century ago. I wonder if they used Bott’s sauce? I seem to recall somewhere that if you consumed too much it was so rich it made you vomit!

The floorboards settled overhead, and I imagined a family sitting for lunch – a stern father, his head in The Times, a tired looking mother dealing with a tousled haired lad, forcing him to go wash his horribly stained hands, and an older boy and his sister filled with excitement about their holiday plans. After an hour or more of vivid dreams and fitful sleep, I forced myself up, had a quick wash, and emerged blinking in to the brilliant sunshine reflecting off the snowy garden.

I had intended to explore the village, but instead I slipped through a gap in the fence, and went off to have a look a look at that run down old barn, determined to exorcise the vague unease it had conjured up in me last night. As I approached I saw that the door had long since fallen, but someone had tacked a notice to the framework: I expected a notice advising demolition and an application for planning permission – it’s right on the edge of town, in unspoilt countryside, you know what barn conversions go for!

Instead I found the most remarkable document, a ink stained piece of paper apparently torn from an exercise book, and scrawled in the most awful hand. It read

Chrismuss Paygent here today 10am.

Admisshun tuppence.

No Hubert Lainites.

By kind permisshun The Outlaws.

Orl Welcum.”

Stopping only to think what text talk and the X box have done to the new generation, I slipped in. Whatever had occurred, I had missed it – I realized it was nearly noon anyway. A smoky fire of wet twigs still burned, and a semi circle of ancient packing crates showed where the “audience” had sat, but of them and the performers there was no trace. Just a single discarded bottle, with a trace of grey disgusting water and a tiny piece of partially dissolved licorice. Something about the scene seemed wrong – I can’t put my finger on it – but for some reason I turned and hurried away, towards the village. I had the strongest impression I was being watched, and jeered at, by some local kids. For a moment I thought I saw them, four tousle haired youths crouched in a ditch across on the field boundary, with a small yapping dog, but when I looked again they were not there. Bloody fever.

I spent the whole afternoon in the house, and nothing untoward happened. I’m heading down the pub now – will email tomorrow.

X

*****************************************************

I thought I saw those bloody kids again. They were following me, but all dressed up in suits, scrubbed pink and shiny, in best shoes. Was down by the church. The dog was skulking nearby, and it looked like the shadow I saw last night. If they are hoaxing me I’ll tell their parents. Getting to me, and my head is swimming. Pub lunch here. Merry Christmas.

Sent by Android

***********************************************

Hey CJ,

Of all the things I thought of when I cam here I never expected this. I have met a girl, and she is adorable. Not in the pub, as you might expect – as I was walking home. She is slender, adorable, has red hair, in a very stylish bob, and was dressed in old fashioned clothes. When I commented on her 1920′s outfit and how well she pulled it off she laughed and asked if I had been at the Christmas Pageant too, and then I understood! Fancy dress!

We met just outside the pub in the street, and she joked when I made a passing comment about how good she looked and she said I looked quite remarkable as well. She really is very attractive, and Ethel – that’s her name, rather sweet hey – Ethel Brown, well we stood and talked for ages, and eventually wandered down to the Churchyard, and sat and talked in the church porch. I mentioned what I had seen at the barn, and she said it was just a copy of the adult pageant put on by her dreadful little brother William and his awful friends. Apparently he is quite the little savage, and eleven years old. I thought by eleven nowadays kids were all about playing Skyrim, GTA or whatever else is fashionable on the consoles. I swiftly changed the subject, that boy gives me the creeps.

And then another mystery was solved – we heard the roar of a motorbike, and Ethel said it must be her brother Robert, on his way home, and she must go. We have agreed to meet again tomorrow, at sunset, in the churchyard. I hope to be invited to dinner by Mr and Mrs Brown, they obviously live nearby. I walked home light headed, and I’m not convinced it was the fever. Did I mention Ethel is adorable? I should have told her where I was staying…

x

*********************************************

CJ

Dreadful night. Voices kept whispering, and people creeping about. Ellen the maid nearly fell over me with a plate of pies, and leftover cabbage smells vile, I have moved in to the pantry so as not to get in the way. But Ethel is here, I heard her at breakfast above, talking to her parents and Robert. Oh and William, her little brother, and his gang. I was nice to him, gave him a fiver, but he just said it was funny “furrin” money. They took me to the barn, and I had to drink some of that licorice water and pretend it was the best thing ever. I keep promising William stuff, and I heard him tell Ginger, Henry and Douglas I’m “soft” on his sister. Jumble tore my trousers while trying to worry my sneakers laces. Awful mutt!

Still soon will be sunset, and I am meeting Ethel at the churchyard, and plan to be introduced to the family. I went in to Theobalds and got my hair cut, and boy I look like a freak, but judging by Robert and his mate Hector the ridiculous hairstyle is fashionable round here.

The sun is setting, and I’m sitting shivering, teeth chattering, whether with cold or fever I know not. Laptop is working again, was unable to get a signal most of the day. I’m sitting on the garden wall now and hope this gets through. Oh, one thing. As the sun sets, the chinks in the old burn make it glow red, as it slips below the horizon behind it. Did you not once tell me that the Red Barn at Polstead got it’s name that way, and in Suffolk such places are associated with the supernatural?

Anyway must go, signal getting intermittent, and soon will be with Ethel. She really is adorable you know…

x

Card Guessing Success Hints at New Physics

by Every Science Staff Reporter Everywhere

Astonishing new results that may suggest that the Standard Model, Common Sense and Randi’s Law have all been violated have been reported from the Gloucestershire basement lab of Dr Jerome Jeromesen (East Cheams Diploma Mill) in his latest zener card trials with Wiccan High Priestess & well known celebrity psychic Tanya Fluffyjugs.

In a set of 25 card guesses Miss Fluffyjugs, attractive mother of six, 27, was able to guess the right symbol an astonishing seven times instead of the five suggested by chance. If this was repeated one hundred more times, and the data holds up to scrutiny, then it may approach the one sigma level of probability, which scientists assure us means they can perform simple arithmetic involving Standard Deviations.

Dr Jerome assures us that he was just running out of funding for his project involving getting attractive young women wrecked on Blue Nun and then making them play Strip Zener when the breakthrough occurred, and while the preceding forty trials had only resulted in his being slapped around the face thirty nine times, and a police investigation, it does seem like that Miss Fluffyjugs has given us a fascinating new insight in to the New Physics.

“It seems we are all connected by a telepathic super sense” said Dr Jerome, who has postulated a new particle, the wouon (pronounced “woo – on”) to explain his amazing results. “While these are early days, I am confident that by Christmas 2012 we will all spend all day in bed doing our work by psychokinesis and social networks like Facebook will be replaced by Super-ESP networks which will allow us to telepathically rifle each others underwear drawers and order pizza without leaving the room.”

“Of course these are early days, and my £85 billion pound National Lottery Grant application is still pending, but I hope to be able to finance much more work with modelling agencies, strip joints and top psi labs around the world to allow us to reach the crucial one sigma level of verifcation needed before we get too excited. Technically, these results could still be down to chance” he stated as he adjusted his mirror shades.

“Still we are sure we can rule out sensory leakage in the and guessing experiments and most forms of experimental error, as I never touched the wine at all!” Star Psychic Miss Fluffyjugs was unavailable for comment as she was nursing a hangover, but noted psi- researcher Donnis Debacle did state that these results were “intriguing” and say that he was hoping to conduct further work personally with the lady in question. The LHC declined to comment, saying that they had several equally promising options that may rewrite physics.

NEXT: How unlicensed psychic experiments might destroy Christmas…

EDIT: Just an amused reaction to the constant hype of  scientific research in press a moment!

The Tobermory Effect: Facebook Friends Fiasco?

OK, so there has been much comment in the last couple of days about Facebook changes – and I being me paid almost no attention, because while my security settings are fairly tight, I regard anything I publish on their as potentially “public domain”. I have hundreds of people who are at best slight acquaintances on my Facebook, and that has never bothered me in the slightest. Recently I set my post settings to “friends of friends” to allow ex-girlfriends and others who have chosen not to add me to see photos taken in the past — I see no harm in this. If something is sensitive I won’t post it on Facebook, and my friends could copy and paste stuff without my permission anyway of they really wanted to. Still I refrain from “public” settings, because I dislike receiving spam as much as the next guy, and I have known plenty of “interesting” characters over the years. If you are on my Facebook I probably like you after all, but I don’t need to tell the whole world about everything.

Now Facebook have done an interesting revision, and  a small blue box in the corner of my screen constantly updates me with all my friends comments to other friends. Of course this only effects wall postings etc, mot private messages — and you can only see people set to “public” or “friends of friends” posts. Still I may well now change my settings back for privacy — but in the meantime I am having fun.

It started when I suddenly began to see the possibilities. I have long been a fan of Saki, HH Munro,and one of his best lines came to me. In Saki’s short story Tobermory a cat is taught to speak English, and his sardonic observations on the things he has witnessed cause havoc at a country house party. The line I thought of was this…

Miss Scrawen, who wrote fiercely sensuous poetry and led a blameless life, merely displayed irritation; if you are methodical and virtuous in private you don’t necessarily want everyone to know it.

So what if my friends of friends suddenly became convinced I was a wild girl-whipping goat-rustling bigfoot-faking desperado? I suddenly saw the potential – now  I could get a reputation as a wild rake, lover and daredevil, and all without leaving my keyboard. I may be a Church Times reading Anglican who falls over after a single glass of wine, and hardly ever says boo to a goose, but now my Facebook alter ego could be something amazing. All I had to do was cultivate on my friends comments. Now of course “friends of friends” have always been able to read my comments on the mutual friends wall, but the problem was when I posted about just getting back from running my Yeti-Massage course in the wilds of the Appalachians, some might point out this was utter bullshit.  Now I saw a way of publicizing my (fictional) life of vice! Of course I would have to create fictional Facebook friends and get them linked to people – against the Terms & Conditions – or would I?

So I decided to try &  started, confident that thousands of friends of friends would prefer the new bogus, CJ! My first post was rather mild –

This Facebook thing where you can see your friends comment with people you don’t know is a ludicrous thing. I know want to invent a couple of imaginary friends, make them Facebook accounts and then post about all the orgies, goat rustling, & bank robberies and so forth we are committing. Just because your personal life is dull and blameless does not mean you want the world to know. Now I can create my own scandals!

And my friend Vicky replied “go for it!” Her friends clearly deserved to know more, so I responded…

You remember the time you Hugh and I dressed up as aliens to abduct Traffic Wardens before selling them to the Welsh? Now all your friends and mine know about this sordid episode, lol!

You can see where this is going? Vicky chose to expose Vampire Hunting in Pittville, so I responded with

Yes, but that was nothing compared with the naked roller derby around Dudley with members of several Boy Bands and the Girl Guides…

until eventually we reached the nadir of

Yes indeed, very true. But for now I am happy that my thirty year obsession with the Bay City Rollers will finally be public knowledge, and that the fact that I faked the infamous Beechwood Arcade Yeti footage is inadvertently revealed to hundreds  of friends of friends!

 

OK, all very childish. But one really could character assassinate a “friend” this way. Then a new idea struck me –

 

 

I am resisting the urge to spend the rest of the day commenting on what a fine game Ars Magic rpg by Atlas Games is on all my friends posts just to engage in guerrilla marketing on Facebook and make them realize how this new system of showing people you don’t knows comments is open to abuse and will cost them marketing revenue!

Serious point really. You see you could just comment on peoples posts something like the following…

oh and I just enjoyed a cool refreshing PEPSI while eating a KRISPY KREME donut. Now for a fabulous pint of CARLINGbefore I jump in a HONDA CIVIC and dash off to watch CHERYL COLE in concert. Hell once they realise this is a guerilla marketers wet dream they will stop it?

Anyway it”s all rather amusing, but I guess I’ll change my settings to friends only. But still, where there are new features there are always ways to play with the, and my wicked wanton and wayward persona is now well established in the shocked minds of anyone who pays any attention to the little blue box, if anyone does, and I am happy for that. If one is fairly virtuous in public one does not want the world to know – so I call this “the Tobermory Effect”. 

 

 

On Being A Sceptic: the Third Sermon of the Reverend Jerome

OK, I think some people are genuinely puzzled by why suddenly CJ the ArchWoo-id of the Dawkins forum has mentioned he sees himself as a sceptic. I therefore have posted the third of my series of Sunday Sermons i wrote for that forum several years ago, in the hope it will clarify much. Of course I hold some religious and paranormal beliefs — I see scepticism as a methodology, not a conclusion! The sermon format was because there was a rule against religious proselytism and sermons on the forum, so I set out to playfully break it — and my user name was Jerome there, so I put my opinions in the fictional Reverend Jerome s mouth to keep up the joke. The reference to Scrubbage minor is actually a reference back to my second sermon I have never posted on the blog, and a few bits may reflect forum in jokes… But for “scepticism as religion” this may take some beating…
Good morning all. It will come as no surprise to regular attendees here at St. Dawkens that I am late: I do wish however that the parish newsletter would stop referring to me as the “late Rev. Jerome”. I am not quite ready for the Elysian fields yet.

Today is of course the feast of three of our most important saints, and that shall set the tone for this mornings discourse, away from the “niceness of God”, and in to more controversial territory. I think we all must first pause for a moment, and meditate silently upon the Bearded One who watches over us — St. James the Randi (1), whose thaumurturgical miracles are known to all of us, and let us first praise his works –

Priest: May he deliver us from Woo.

Congregation: Long live the JREF challenge!(2)

Let us not also forget St. Shermer(3) and St. Gardner(4), for all three have brought much light in to the world, and helped defeat the foul darkness of superstition. And remember that you too are called to be a light unto the world, and to bring joy and knowledge where there was ignorance and despair, and to smite evil. And let us pray briefly for the Queen, and Her Government, who have recently passed a most righteous bill, which maketh fraudulent practices of this sort illegal, and allows the smiting of Evildoers.(5)

And on that note, let us sing Hymn number 451, God Save the Queen, to the exuberant tune of the Sex Pistols. And yes I am aware Scrubbage minor is incarcerated in a straightjacket this week. After last weeks accident I did not want him to face temptation again…

This week I wish us to turn our attention to matters of Doubt and Faith. This morning, I plan to discuss why Doubt is a Virtue, and encourage us in our Scepticism — and in this evening sermon I shall turn my attention to Faith.

Now I am sure we have all sat through many long and tedious sermons on the value of doubt – was it not instilled in us as children, that our teachers should be questioned, authorities constantly checked for signs of pompous glib ignorance and all we were taught checked carefully for signs of underlying ideological bias? If not it bloody well should have been, for that is what differentiates education, which leads to questioning and allows us to learn, from indoctrination, which tells us that “this is how things are and you better believe it johnny or you will get a clump on the head.”

Now of course children have a pernicious and innate tendency to trust adults — something I have noticed many times, and despite our best attempts to teach them that this is dangerous – and if a lady in a sleigh offers you turkish delight to get in her sled for a ride, or a leering old perv offers you sweeties to get in his car, you know the correct answer I’m sure — tell them to F*** right off, shout loudly and run like hell. Still, trusting adults serves a useful purpose – when Daddy says if you put your hand in the fire you will get burned he means it, and you must as a child listen. Well unless you are Thomas Cranmer.

 

Dave D's wonderful illustration of me from his blog (linked)

So as children we have a pernicious but actually valuable in survival terms tendency to trust at least some adults. And the sad thing is, some children never grow out of it. As Paul wrote
“Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.”(1 Corinthians 14:20)
or to put it another way “Wise up, sucker.” (I have no idea why he was under the misapprehension children were not evil, huh Scrubbage?) Be as, the carpenter said, “As Wise as Serpents, as Gentle as Doves.” In short, use your brains. Otherwise you are going to get fleeced, the fate of most of those who follow shepherds.

Right, so once we are adults, we should be sceptical. It’s our duty and responsibility. And furthermore, without doubt how can we progress? If any here are inclined to agree with me without thinking it through, I must say — I have some prime Attractive Wetland in Florida you might wish to invest in?

Still, Scepticism is much misunderstood. Often when Bob tells us that the reason he was found with his trousers down in the attractive widow Jenkins bedroom by his wife, it was because indeed his belt had failed, his motorbike subsequently struck the good widows fence, and he was hurled bodily through her open bedroom window and just happened to end up on top of her in the compromising position in which he was found, well we like his good wife doubt. I’m sure Bob’s explanation was a perfectly reasonable one, as we all agree, but rightly we question…

Too often scepticism is regarded as mere “nay saying”. There are no ghosts, ghoulies, or invisible pink unicorns. UFOs did not abduct Edna Mullins along with the Church Missionary Fund, and leave her on a beach in Majorca, but sadly kept the money. Some have even doubted my explanation about that unfortunate episode with the supermodel, the clothesline and the riding crop — all perfectly innocent, despite the video. The camera frequently lies, and I’m sure you accept the testimony I was watching the Grand Prix with my good friend Max at the time…

NO, scepticism is NOT simply saying “No” or being a professional contrarian.The sceptic is the person who questions, without pre-judgement, every issue. They make a considered judgement, based upon the evidence presented for and against the claims, and the rational coherence of this, often tested against their own experience. Of course sceptics usually disagree with one another — because all of this requires a subjective input — but what form of knowledge does not?

Of course there are pseudo-sceptics, heretics I’m afraid, who differ from this path of righteousness. I plan an open air barbecue and marshmallow toasting this Wednesday, to which any who hold this position are cordially invited. Bruing your own stake – er I mean steak… The a priori sceptic denies that a certain category of phenomena are at all possible, and will consider no evidence whatsoever in support of that hypothesis. Hence we can see that blind faith and dogmatism persist, even after religion has declined! These folk often assign a value of impossible to anything put in the category “paranormal”. As the category is so wide and nebulous as to include all manner of silly things, I am not surprised, but clearly the truth of otherwise of each phenomena therein should be tested on its own merits. If I do not believe in Werewolves, that tells me nothing of the reality of Giant Squid. I recall some sceptics who claimed ghost hunters were creating “orbs” with Photoshop a few years back. Piffle! The orbs were there, and perfectly natural. A good explanation was not long coming, and the phenomena ceased to be regarded by any intelligent person as “paranormal” in almost all instances. Yet a priori scepticism had made some people blind to the real causality – they were right they were not paranormal, but completely wrong in their reasoning!

Nope, the true sceptic keeps an open mind, questions authority, and doubts. Of course we accept certain doctrines on faith — my knowledge of physics suggest to me that it would be unnecessary to study every perpetual motion device suggested, unless the inventor can show me how it breaks the Holy Writ of Physics. If my understanding of the doctrines of physics are wrong, then I rejoice to have been proven wrong, and we can all benefit, and move on, building better models and increasing our understanding.

Now how do I decide which doctrines to accept on faith? I note that a huge body of work by learned divines exists, building upon the work of earlier divines. In Physics the doctrines are built upon for the most part things one can test oneself, and where it goes beyond that in to speculatively theology, as in Quantum Mechanics and Cosmogeny, we can at least test the maths by seeing how it relates to what we already know. That is the great thing about Science — it’s claims are provisional, and change with new data, and testable, and provide us with useful benefits in terms of technology. I will talk more about these issues in tonights sermon on faith however.

So, as I have rambled on long enough – doubt is a virtue, and scepticism a wonderful methodology for testing ones claims, and approaching truth. The process is never ending, and yet that does not prevent us reaching provisional conclusions, or making judgements on how we see the evidence – we are not forever trapped in Fortean (6) agnosticism.

As a final word however: beware hypocrisy! For if we are truly sceptics, then we must be willing to openly question our own Sacred Dogmas, and barbecue our won Sacred Cows. Even those Holy Doctrines which seem most certain to us, like the Laws of Physics, must be revised in light of new evidence – for if we had piously accepted Newton or Galilieo or Darwin as the final Prophets in their fields, where would be now? Questioning those eminent Holy men led us forward, and Fort was right to remind us those damned uncomfortable facts are exactly what lead us in to questioning, and overthrowing accepted wisdom with new and exciting breakthroughs.

So Doubt is a virtue, and i am minded of the words of Aleister Crowley, who wrote
““I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

Tonight we shall discuss why Faith too is a virtue.

We shall end with Hymn no 21, “Mr. Crowley” by the Right Rev. Ozzy Ozbourne.

Thank you!

Sermon Footnotes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi
2. http://www.randi.org/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort

Buy my new book and release your inner psychic powers! Out today!

Please note this was my 2011 April Fool’s Joke – it is NOT to be taken seriously!

 

Hello! I am very excited to announce my new book, detailing my spiritual adventures and a guaranteed path to unleashing your full psychic power! Reasonably priced, the book launch today will be accompanied by a book signing and I’ll also be performing auric realignment, spiritual massage and colonic irrigation of the chakras for the lucky few who get to attend the signing!

Just $126.66!

This book has it all, all the accumulated wisdom I have gained from studying at the feet of great masters. Once I doubted the very existence of psychic powers, but years of studying have slowly revealed to me the magical wisdom of my Danish ancestry, the healing power of hops, and the deep secrets of the multiverse. With this book you can master them too!!! Sceptics will laugh and point and write blogs about you, but armed with these powers you can turn Hayley Stevens and her ilk in to a frog. (I turned Susan Blackmore in to a newt…. she got better.)

Learn how to

* Attract women — by spiritual gravity! * Become irresistible to NICE men! * Develop your Auric Armour! * Summon pixies to do your house chores! *Remote Homeopathy! * The Von Juntz formula! * Dream your way to Riches! * Get research funding from the SPR! * Banish Wiseman and other household pests! *Read the Prunes! * Cast a Deadly Spell! * See through peoples clothes with the Intellego Animal rite! * Pass through the gates of Alkoth! *Locate the Holy Grail in Stafford Castle! *The Secret of the Godlearners! *What Olaus Wormius was too scared to translate in the Necronomicon! *Look sharper than a Supermodel! *Turn Sceptics in to Small Amphibians! * The Forbidden Secret of Mazille! * Fly without Ryan Air! * Improve your Quidditch Technique!

Let’s face it, bending spoons is so 1974. With my esoteric training you will be able to bend minds, starting with your own!!!

From the publishers website –

“CJ Romer is undoubtedly among one of the great mystics of our age, and a 7=6 Ineptus Exemptus of the Order of the Silver Twilight. In this book he finally reveals the results of years of occult study at Durenmar, his mastery of the obscure tomes of Bonisagus, and his esoteric heroquest with his friend DC to find the legendary lost treasure of the Cathars. Learn how with a German Secret Master named Axel he rediscovered the lost secret of Remote Homeopathy, and  the terrible  inner secrets of Romerian Witchcraft. A practical Self-Initiation Guide, this book can make you EVERY BIT AS PSYCHIC AS CJ, GUARANTEED!!!!”

I do hope you will all rush out and buy a copy this morning???

cj x

CJ’s Halloween

Awful doggerel, but you get the spirit?  An autobiographical scream of angst!

 

 

It’s Halloween night as I shudder in fear

Heart racing as awful the hour draws near

I sweat and I tremble as soon I will see

The horrors they broadcast on Living TV

 

Now once Halloween was just a rap on my door

Kids proud of ASBOs, all covered in gore

They chuckle and threaten and extort from me

Still I’d rather be robbed than watch Living TV

 

Back in the 90′s I ran Cheltenham’s ghost team

My insane committee would force me to scream

But I’d rather be infamous with the C.P.R.G.

Than  the bathos of tonight’s show on Living TV

 

Teaching students about psi was a dreary fate

They’d mess up my ghost hunts, get drunk, and date

The Student Society knew little para-psychology

But a million times more than shown on Living TV

 

I read through the musty journals of the famed SPR

I took long coach rides to London, having no car

Grosse, Cornell, Cassirer and Playfair taught me

Yet none will be heard from this eve on Living TV

 

I know I have sinned, and whored myself for pay

I made a lot of paranormal TV, what can I say?

I signed on the dotted line, I needed cash you see

But it wasn’t all that bad, MY stuff for Living TV!

 

I got to meet Acorah, Yvette, Karl and the team

I lived in a nightmare that to some was a dream

Yet I felt they were good hearted and I took my fee

I’m proud I worked backstage for ANTIX and Living TV

 

So after Bad Psychics, JREF, UK Skeptics and more

I still felt the shows might open the door

To a popular understanding of topics dear to me

Yet now I realise that I sold my soul — to Living TV!

 

I’ve made so many dear friends, and enemies too

On the Most Haunted forum I’d sit an think through

Arguments and threads that were galling to me

But a million times better than Living TV!

 

So I’m filled with fear as the hours tick by

And I draw rapid breath as my fate I can scry

“Paranormal Investigation Live” is coming you see

And I scream then  curse subscribing to Living TV… 

Join DADD! (Dawkinites Against Dungeons and Dragons!)

Tired of religious nuts having all the censorious fun! Join my new campaign!

I hereby propose a new organisation, DADD, short for Dawkinites Against Dungeons And Dragons. It has long been troubling my conscience that one of the industries in which I work, role playing games design, encourages theism, supernaturalism and belief in the occult and magical thinking.

In the “roleplaying game” Dungeons & Dragons (originally 1974 by TSR, today published by Wizards of the Coast) players, often young teens at a very vulnerable and impressionable age, take on the role of “wizards” and “clerics” (!!!) who perform magical acts by casting spells (despite the fact that no one has ever claimed Randi’s millions and anyone who has ever read a book knows all parapsychology is bunk and part of an evil conspiracy of Jesuit controlled pseudo-scientists). The book positive encourages “worship” of these deities – many of which are actually based upon REAL deities whose followers have oppressed and persecuted atheists in the past! The infamous Deities & Demigods book contains for example stats for Zeus and Odin, and detailed description of polytheism, pantheism, and other religious practices. Players are expected to “roleplay” dedicated service to and worship of these deities, which in the game is actually OBJECTIVELY TRUE! and rewards the players character with experience points.

This seemingly fantastic and innocuous hobby has repeatedly been used in the past too attract teenagers from their natural interests in sex, drugs and rock n roll to a study of occultism as a way to rot their minds and lead them to magical thinking, and from there it is a short step to reading a well known Evangelical tract and being convinced of ones sinfulness and becoming a Theist! Church groups often encourage these roleplaying games, and there are even a number of explicitly Christian and Christian themed games out there.

Even such seemingly innocent entertainment’s as White Wolf’s Vampire, in which one plays a tragically hip angst ridden teenage vampire who gets “to kill people and take their blood” – all clearly harmless enough – has actually hidden within deep Christian overtones, with concepts of damnation, salvation (here cunningly disguised as Golconda) and objective morality. Even this most, on the surface, acceptable game has a hidden theistic/magical agenda – the Disciplines are clearly supernatural powers, irreconcilable with any logical naturalistic paradigm.

So what can the sensible atheist parent due to protect their child from this hideous threat? Firstly, take your copy of The God Delusion, and read it loudly to build the confidence to confront your child. Secondly, arm yourself with a big stick – teenagers CAN bite when roused. Thirdly, search their bedroom, and take and burn all this supernaturalist mind rotting theistic trojan horse stuff, in a big bonfire. And call all the other freethinking parents, and encourage them to do just the same.

Topics not directly associated with roleplaying games and often associated with roleplayers but possibly worthy of destruction are dice, drugs, drug paraphenalia, occult books, the works of Stephen J Gould, the Journal of European Parapsychology, BDSM gear, girls, hot water bottles, cats and Telly Tubby merchandise. Destroy it all! You may also want to ban your child from internet access to prevent them from going to such well known spawning sites of fundamentalist, Catholic and liberal theology as http://www.rpg.net !

If atheism is to survive, we must protect our children’s minds from this terrible threat! Say no to God and the Supernatural today, and organise a Freethinkers bonfire for your neighbourhood!

ACT NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

This warning was brought to you (mainly as a parody of the Religious Right)
by CJ x